the fight for you is all i've ever known
by singsongsung
Summary: Future!fic. "In the aftermath of a tragedy, Nate Archibald asks Blair Waldorf for the impossible. She says yes." Nate/Blair, Nate/Serena, Dan/Blair, Chuck/Blair, Dan/Serena.
1. prologue

**A/N:** This is set in the future and moves back in time. I've borrowed a certain something from _Harry Potter_ - the reasons for which will be explained in later chapters.

* * *

the fight for you is all i've ever known

* * *

**2018.**

"I want to do it."

Blair sits up in bed, startled, and tugs her sleep mask up from her eyes and over her head – she would be afraid, too, but she'd known him for long enough to be able to recognize his voice, even when it was thick and laced with something hard and impenetrable like it was right now.

Next to her, Dan sits up, squinting at the figure in the doorway of her bedroom. "_Nate?_" he asks, incredulous.

But Nate barely spares him a glance. "Blair," he says more urgently, "I want to do it."

She knows, instantly, what he's talking about and it makes her sigh – she'd known this was coming. "Sleep," she tells Dan. "We'll be fine." She throws back the blankets and stands up in her slip, reaching out for her dressing gown and pulling it on over top. She waves a hand toward the door, indicating that Nate should walk out.

In the harsh light of the hallway, he looks like hell. It doesn't surprise her: he's looked like the walking dead for about a fortnight now, and she can't blame him. His clothes are rumpled and he hasn't shaved in quite a while; his eyes are dark and haunted.

"We should sit," she says hopefully.

Nate rakes a hand through his hair, looking as though he's only moments from falling apart right in front of her. "Just tell me if it's possible."

She ties her dressing gown closed and crosses her arms. "Take some time, Nate," she cautions him softly.

He looks like he wants to throw something. "I _have_ taken time, Blair. I've taken two weeks, and they've been the worst two weeks of my _life_."

She doesn't flinch. "I know that."

"So fucking _tell_ me."

"You're acting out of grief. You aren't thinking straight."

"Dammit," he growls. "No one has seen or heard from my wife in _five days_."

"And that's not entirely out of character," she reminds him softly, "for your wife."

"Something makes me think these are extraordinary circumstances," he snaps.

"Don't try to _guilt_ this out of me," Blair replies harshly, but she keeps her voice soft. "I'm just as worried as you are."

He appeals to her like a drowning man and it breaks her heart. "So _help_ me. _Please_, Blair."

She licks her dry lips, feeling nervous. "You have to give her some breathing space."

Nate doesn't dignify that with a response and she can't exactly blame him. It's a ridiculous suggestion – all things considered. But Chuck has not one but two PIs working on it and Blair is using every tactic in her book, except for one. She's _trying_, she really is, but she understands his urgency with as much sympathy as is possible. Empathy is the one thing she can't feel for Nate. She doesn't know what he's going through, and a selfish part of her hopes that she never will.

"Blair." His voice cracks.

"You're asking…for something very serious."

"I know."

"There are consequences, Nate. There are always consequences."

His eyes flood with tears, surprising them both, and he wipes them away harshly, impatiently. "Isn't she worth it?"

Blair's heart vaults up into her throat. "_Of course_. I'm just…I'm working so hard to be careful…"

"You can fix this. Don't you understand that? You can _fix_ this. You can. So you…you have to."

She lifts her hands to massage her temples lightly. "It was hard back then, too. You remember," she says gently.

"Nothing is as hard as this." He leaves no room for argument, but even if he had, she would have no way of responding to that. He's telling the truth.

She looks at him for a long, long moment. "What if we mess ourselves up even more?"

"Nothing is worse," he insists, and again, he's right. "_Nothing_." He blows out his breath, moving toward her and gripping her upper arms a little too hard to be comfortable, but she allows it. "I'll help you."

Her eyes widen. "What?"

"I'll help you, too. It doesn't just have to be about me. I'll help you." His eyes shine. "I'll make sure he doesn't hurt you like he did."

She pulls back at those words, shaking off his touch. "I don't _need_ – "

"Then do it for me," he interrupts her. "Do it for whatever reason, I don't care. Just, _please_. Do this."

Blair glances over her shoulder, at her bedroom door, where her…her what? her boyfriend? her friend-with-benefits? Where Dan is sleeping. She bites her lip and looks back at Nate's face, at his desperate eyes, at the grief lining his face.

She relents. "Fine. Follow me."

He moves after her down the hall, matching her every step. The door to the room is unlocked, the shelves lined with ordinary books and knick-knacks, the pocket watch set carefully in a drawer like a boring antique, nothing special.

She loops the long, golden, slightly rusty chain around her neck and crooks a finger at him wordlessly. He steps closer to her and she loops the chain around his neck as well.

"Consequences, Nate," she whispers.

At that, he gives her the tiniest of smiles, accompanied by a fond look. "Junior year of high school, Blair."

She breathes out very slowly. "Don't forget where you come from."

His smile is gone when she glances back at him. "No danger of that."

And then she spins the pocket watch, again and again and again, and closes her eyes as they fly back through time.

**tbc.**


	2. one

A/N: Thank you for your reviews!

* * *

They land on the steps of the Met.

"Ah," Blair says, satisfied, as she tucks her hair behind her ears. She's wearing her old Constance Billard uniform, plaid skirt and blouse, and she has the requisite headband sitting atop her head like a crown. "Perfect."

Nate glances down at himself, the khaki pants and the blazer over the white button-down. His tie is loosened around his neck and when he sticks his hand in his pants pocket he finds a joint waiting for him. He sends a sidelong glance at Blair, feeling very young all of a sudden. "You look happy," he notes.

She quells the smile on her lips but it's still in her eyes when she looks back at him. "It's like acting in my very own movie. And I already know how it ends."

"Yeah, well." Nate frowns. "I want to change that ending."

(He thinks about it far too often, about how empty her eyes had looked, about the broken way – )

Blair is staring at him.

"What?" he asks her, suddenly nervous.

"Did you mean it?" she asks simply. "When you said you'd make sure he didn't hurt me like he did before."

Nate nods. "Yes. I meant it. We both know better now."

"Okay." She sends him a beaming smile, recognizing her minions as they approach, Penelope's attention dedicated to her cell phone while Kati and Iz giggle together one step behind her. "So let's put that knowledge to work."

"B," Penelope simpers as she approaches, and starts gossiping about one of the freshman girls.

Blair arches an eyebrow – high school was so easy; she had all the right answers back then. "And _why_ should I care about this, P?" she asks, tapping one foot impatiently.

"Hey," a quiet voice says.

All of a sudden Serena's standing a couple feet away, hovering near them with a bright smile, but everything else about her is tentative, testing the waters.

Nate feels his heart constrict. She's right _there_, all young and bright-eyed and beautiful, wearing her uniform in that non-uniform way of hers, blonde hair up in a high ponytail. She doesn't even know how many chances they have left.

"Hey yourself," he breathes out, and he can't help it, he rushes to her and gathers her into a tight hug.

She lets out a surprised little gasp right by his ear, her laughter following on its heels. "What's up with you?" she whispers as she squeezes him back.

He pulls back to look at her face and to grin at her. "Happy to see you, that's all."

Her cheeks colour slightly and he sees it dancing in her eyes, confusion and something like a warning, and then she floats out of his arms and moves on to pull Blair into an equally enthusiastic hug, most likely in order to quiet the minions, who are whispering madly amongst themselves.

Blair shoots daggers at him with her eyes and he shrinks back a little. He'd forgotten, for a moment, where they were.

"Sweetie," she says to him, plastering on a smile. "Walk me to class?"

Penelope's smirk is knowing. "Class doesn't start for another fifteen minutes, B."

Blair's glare is lazy and lethal. "Was I _speaking_ to you, Penelope? Have you finally resorted to making yourself _into_ Nate, since obsessing over him clearly wasn't enough for you?"

Hazel's jaw drops and Penelope glares back at Blair, suitably chastised. Serena flicks a hand into the air, laughing as she says, "Let them go." She doesn't spare him another glance.

Blair hooks her arm through his and he walks her to the Constance courtyard.

* * *

"Idiot," she hisses, smacking his arm as they hide out in an empty Constance Billard hallway. "You're _hopeless_, you really are. Should I be thankful that you didn't start making out of her in front of God and Gossip Girl?"

He almost smiles at the way she says that, like God and Gossip Girl are equals. "Oh," he says slowly, "Gossip Girl…"

Blair rolls her eyes extravagantly and digs into the bag balanced in the crook of her arm. She pulls out her cell phone and they huddle around the tiny screen together as she scrolls through the latest Gossip Girl posts.

The latest update is about Serena…and Dan. Serena's in a yellow dress, hair tumbling down her back, eyes closed as she kisses Dan.

Everything snaps into place, and Nate feels a jolt as he realizes _exactly_ where they are in the timeline of their lives.

"The masquerade ball," he whispers. _I tried to tell you I loved you_, he remembers, and the shine of her eyes in the bar's low light, the catch of her breath: _…you loved me?_ "This is after the masque ball."

"The _day_ after, to be precise," Blair says with a nod, glancing at the date of the post and making a face at Gossip Girl's stupid little limerick. She smirks at him, quietly amused. "I tried to lose my virginity to you last night. You didn't find me in time."

He breathes out a laugh. "I tried…" But he didn't really. "I…I kissed Jenny Humphrey last night."

Blair's eyes widen considerably. "Excuse me?"

Nate sighs, slumping against the wall, his head tipped back. "She and Serena traded masks."

It takes her a second, but she understands what he's really saying. "You wanted to kiss Serena."

"I wanted to…" He glances over at her and then ducks his head, feeling guilty.

"This is the past, Nate," Blair says impatiently. "It's water under the bridge. We both know how you and I end. Tell me."

She helped him, she got him here, so he relents, "I tried to tell her I wasn't over her, that I couldn't fight it…that I loved her. She wasn't _hearing_ me, before. I just wanted her to listen."

Blair stares at him for a moment, unblinking. "There are so many ways," she finally sighs, "that _everything_ could've been different…"

He nods, swallowing hard. "Yeah."

"We'll figure this out," she promises him, putting her phone away. "But if we're redoing our lives then I still plan on maintaining my reputation. Right now, you're my boyfriend. Act like it."

He attempts at smile. "Yes, ma'am."

Students start to meander into the hall, eyeing them, searching for gossip. Blair presses a quick kiss to his lips. "See you, sweetie," she tells him with a smile.

Nate leaves her there, letting her friends surround her. Serena is noticeably absent, but he tries not to dwell on that. He heads to St. Jude's, realizing in a panic that he has no idea what his next class is – and, more importantly, that he now has to learn everything again, not to mention retaking the SATs.

* * *

"So." Serena looks painfully nervous. "You and Nate…"

Blair shrugs as blithely as she can. "Didn't happen. He didn't find me in time."

"Oh." Serena's reaction is careful and she peers at Blair's face. "Are you…okay with that?"

"Of course, S." She smiles. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"It just seemed…like the perfect plan. You were excited."

"There will be other plans."

Serena laughs, and Blair notices that it's strained. "You and your plans, B."

Nate approaches them before she can say anything more, wandering over from St. Jude's. "Hey!" he greets them both.

"Hi," Blair says, beaming. Serena's response is a smile that lasts all of one second, but that doesn't stop Nate from looking at her with all the longing in the world. She rolls her eyes and turns back to Serena. "We have plans…but I'll see you later?"

She nods, waving them both off. "Later," she says with a nod.

* * *

Blair sets her schoolbooks down on her desk and looks pointedly at them. "You _had_ to come back to high school…why, exactly?" More seriously, she asks, "What is this going to solve?"

Nate is sitting on her bed, shoes off and legs up on the mattress. "I don't know," he admits. "I need some time…to figure it out."

She takes a seat in her desk chair. "Have you considered…the possibility, that maybe this is something _you_ can't fix? Maybe this is something bigger than you?"

"No." He won't consider that. "I can fix this. I will."

She leans forward, elbows on her knees. "We can always go back. There's only one future and I know it's not a place you're eager to be right now, but…we can go back. We can wait for her."

"No, I can't…I can't _wait_ again. It can't be like that. We can't finally get what we want only to have everything fall apart – life can't work that way."

"But life _does_ work that way," she points out softly. "Life sucks, Nate. It's the reality of it, and everyone needs to learn that at some point."

"Don't…don't try to _teach_ me things. I know I look like a kid right now, but I'm not. I know what life is."

Blair pulls the headband off of her head and tosses it aside, exasperated. "I don't understand what you're looking to find here."

He shoots her a pleading look. "Just give me some time."

She spins toward her desk, so that her back is to him. "At least do your geography homework in the meantime."

* * *

For a long time after Nate goes home at around eight o'clock, Blair stays awake and snoops through her own things, remembering this time in her life. For a while it had been perfect: straight As, the queen bee of her school, the boyfriend she was sure she would someday marry.

She sighs as she flips through the pages of an old diary. _Blair Cornelia Archibald_ is doodled all over the inside cover. She remembers how much she'd loved the look of that name, of the woman she would one day be, the way each word had an 'i' and an 'a', the way it sounded sophisticated.

The masque ball. That was only days before everything changed. She remembers, now, the way Jenny had come to her and had cried about it, had said _he kissed me, he thought I was Serena_. She'd sent her away and cried. And it wasn't long after that Nate's life had fallen apart, his father arrested on a city sidewalk, and only hours after that that Blair Waldorf had taken off her dress in a public place and given her virtue to Chuck Bass.

She sighs, lifting the covers on her bed and crawling into it without even bothering to change out of her clothes. She hadn't really wanted Chuck then, not in the way she would eventually want him, not in the way that would ruin her. And she didn't particularly want him now.

She rolls onto her back and hisses, "_Fuck_," into the dark.

Choices. She has to make choices. And she has to help Nate make choices, too.

"This isn't what I signed up for," she whispers, and then she closes her eyes and lets herself sleep.

* * *

Nate is driving himself crazy. He stands in the foyer uncomfortably for five minutes of conversation with his father about his relationship with Blair and then escapes up to his room, where he paces his room for the better part of an hour.

He can't get it out of his head. He can't stop remembering, can't stop reliving those moments when he'd clung to her like a lifeline and she'd let him go. She let him sink and run off to drown herself, and it makes him ache in a profound, tragic way. She could've just let him love her; for _once_ she could have slowed down and just given herself over to him.

He sits on his bed and looks around. He feels too young for this room, for the hiding places where he stashes his pot, for the school uniforms, for the soccer balls and the permanently unmade bed, no matter how many times the maid ploughs through his room on a daily basis. He's older now, he has problems bigger than these, and he needs to fix them – he needs to fix the future.

Finally, he leaves the room of his childhood. He can't think there, he needs fresh air, he needs a new perspective.

* * *

The air outside is just chilly enough to make him smile and breathe in deep so that it stings his lungs a little.

He just walks. He lets his feet carry him, listening to the beat of his sneakers against the sidewalk and dodging other pedestrians as he goes. He tries to clear his mind of everything but _now_: what does he need to do right now?

He needs to find out –

All thinking of now stops when he sees Serena standing about five feet away from him, outside of a coffee shop, her hands cradling a tall styrofoam cup as she blows into it lightly to cool the liquid.

"S!" he calls to her, feeling his spirits lift at the sight of her.

She turns and a smile springs up to her lips when she sees him. "Hey, you." She squints at his face a little. "I thought you and Blair had…plans."

"Uh…not really. We just did homework and stuff."

"Oh." Her brow furrows, like he's confused her, and he can't think about the fact that he just might've messed up some cover story that Blair constructed anymore than he can stop himself from reaching out to smooth her eyebrows with his fingers.

"Nate," she says, low and startled, as he moves his hand to cup her cheek.

_Now_, he reminds himself. _Think about now._

He skims his thumb over the apple of her cheek, longing to touch more of her skin. "Last night," he murmurs, "you and Jenny traded masks."

Her eyes flicker as she tries to catch up with his train of thought. "I…yes. For fun."

"I thought she was you."

She lifts one shoulder in a shrug but makes no attempt to dislodge his hand against her cheek. "Sorry," she jokes, giving him the kind of smile that hopes that this is the end of their conversation.

But it's not, not at all. "Yeah," he says softly, eyes locked with hers. "I kissed her."

She starts – he can feel her physical reaction when she pulls back from his palm for a moment. "Nate," she whispers, her eyes darting around.

"I kissed her because I thought she was you," he clarifies, to make sure she knows exactly what he's saying. "I asked her not to say anything, to just let me talk. And I told her – "

"_Nate._" Her voice is raw; she's begging him.

He smoothes her cheek with his thumb again to offer comfort. He's not going to stop talking. "I told her that this is killing me. You and me, it's…" He swallows. "It's killing me. I'm not over you. I'm never going to be over you. We have to tell Blair. You have to give me a chance." Her eyes are wide and full of alarm and he almost laughs. "You have to, S. Because I love you."

The coffee cup falls from her hands and the lids come off so that coffee spills all over Nate's shoes and the bottom of his pants. It makes him jump a little, and he drops his hand, glancing down at the mess.

When he looks back up at Serena a moment later, she's looking at him with a million things in her eyes. "Nate," she whispers, just as Dan steps out of the coffee shop and moves to stand by her, like a boyfriend would.

"Nate," Dan says, calm and cautious. "Hey."

"We're…" Serena hesitates, and for a moment Nate swears he sees tears in her eyes, but she blinks and bumps her shoulder to Dan's. "We have plans," she says with quiet confidence.

"Serena – "

"I'm sorry," she cuts him off, her voice trembling, just barely. When she speaks again it's clear and easy: "Sorry about your shoes."

* * *

Nate sits down on the curb. He finds Blair's name in his list of contacts and calls her.

"It's night-time in the past, too, Nate," she says with the last of her patience, not bothering with a proper greeting. "People need sleep. _I _need sleep, since you woke me up to bring you here."

He presses his forehead into the palm of his free hand. "Can we break up tomorrow?"

She sighs, and her voice is gentler when she says, "We'll talk about it in the morning."

Before he can reply, she hangs up.

He knows better than to call back.  


* * *

**tbc.**


	3. two

**A/N:** Thank you for your feedback!

* * *

"What did you do?" Blair asks knowingly as she walks down the staircase. She's dressed impeccably; her knee socks are almost blindingly white, her headband is thick and red, and the necklaces around her neck look elegant and expensive. Nate stands in the foyer, watching her and feeling like he's lived through a train wreck.

He rubs at his hair. "Told Serena about what happened at the masque ball," he confesses.

Blair sighs a long-suffering sigh as she walks over to him. "Of course you did."

He winces. "And then Dan walked over."

"Of course he did."

He pouts at her. "Do you have anything _helpful_ to say?"

She smiles softly and moves toward the dining room, expecting him to follow. "Let's eat breakfast and I'll give you all my fabulous advice."

When they're settled at the table, Dorota uncovering trays of fruit and pastries for them, Blair turns in her chair so that her whole body is angled toward Nate's and says very seriously, "We have to put this in perspective."

He frowns at her around a mouthful of croissant. "What do you mean by that?"

"Nate!" She waves a hand toward his mouth. "How old are you?"

He holds a hand up in front of his lips to shield her from the view of half-chewed food and says cheekily, "Sixteen."

She kicks his leg. "Nate, I'm not joking. Don't you remember all of the things that happened shortly _after_ the masque ball? With your father? With me…and Chuck? With you and me and Chuck?"

"Yes. But I still don't understand what you're suggesting."

She's relieved when he sounds like his adult self. "Your father isn't going to accept the two of us breaking up. He has too much pinned on my mother's support."

"Shit," Nate sighs, leaning back in his chair. "And he's on drugs."

Blair pops a grape into her mouth. "We have to be careful. We have to remember things."

Nate looks at the wall. "Yeah…"

"We're risking a lot of change," Blair tells him pointedly. "Things that happened – they won't happen exactly the same way. You can't recreate – "

"I know," Nate cuts her off tersely. "I'm not trying to recreate. I'm trying to…prevent."

She frowns deeply. "Why didn't you _tell_ me that instead of ambushing me in the middle of the night? We could've gone back two weeks instead of going back over a decade!"

"Because I need to figure it out," he spits back at her, surprising them both with the vehemence of his words. "It's not so much what happened as me needing to understand what happened _after_."

"Nate – "

"I would have taken care of her."

"Sweetie, I know, but – "

"She didn't let me."

Blair clenches her jaw and decides that it's in her best interest to remain silent.

"We can undo it, right? We can stay here and…figure it out and then go back? I mean, we can go forward. We can go back to 2018, back to our lives as they were."

She blinks. "I didn't know that was what you wanted."

He sighs wearily. "I'd rather have her for five years that not have her at all. I don't want to change that."

She purses her lips as she regards him. "You're a little more complex than I've ever given you credit for."

Nate frowns at her, and for a moment he looks thoroughly sixteen, with his awry on his head and his St. Jude's tie loose around his neck as he pouts at her a little. "Gee, thanks."

Blair eats a pastry with a lemon-flavoured filling; her eating habits are better now than they were at sixteen. "You're welcome. I'm proud of you, Nate," she says seriously. "That's not an easy choice."

"Do you think it's the right one?"

Honestly, she tells him, "I do."

* * *

"Waldorf."

She starts when Chuck approaches her in the courtyard. It takes her only a second to regain her composure, but still, it's a second of weakness. "Bass." She scowls at him. "What do _you_ want?"

He holds up empty hands as if to prove his innocence. "Don't get your La Perlas in a twist. I was just saying hello."

"And why would you do that?" She rakes her eyes over his face, desperately searching for signs of attraction or desire, and pretends her heart isn't pounding wildly in her chest.

Chuck smirks and sidles closer. "You're feisty today. What's wrong? Trouble in paradise?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

His smirk fades into a frown; she's confused him. "What are you saying?"

"Nothing. Nothing, I – " She pauses, embarrassed but refusing to give that away. "It doesn't matter. Nate and I are none of your business. Go smarm elsewhere."

She stalks away. She won't let him hurt her again.

* * *

He catches her in the hallway, loops an arm around her waist and tugs her into a storage closet, kicking the door closed behind them.

"Hey!" she protests, and then softens her voice when she says, "Nate, I have class."

"Screw class." He keeps his arm around her because she hasn't asked him to move it. "I want to talk."

One of her eyebrows arches. "You want to _talk_?"

"Yes."

"About…last night?" she asks cautiously.

"And before that."

Something flashes in her eyes, something bordering on fear, and she licks her lips. "Before," she repeats in a whisper.

"That night – "

"Nate. Don't."

"It was the best night of my life," he says smoothly, as if she hadn't spoken. He's had more years with her, he knows her better now than he did when they were kids.

Her cheeks flush. "It was a long time ago."

"S," he sighs. "I meant what I said. I can't get over you, I – "

She cuts him off, the tone of her voice alarmed, the words flying out of her mouth a little too quickly: "I have a boyfriend."

Nate shrugs. "You don't belong with him."

Her eyes widen and she looks ready to tell him off, to contradict him, but she doesn't, she just stands there and stares at him like she's waiting for more.

So he gives it to her: "_I_ belong with you. I love you. I'm never going to love anybody else the way that I love you."

The truth is that he's still expecting her to look at him the way she look at him that night at Brandy Library, the very first time either one of them had either voice their feelings out loud; he still expects the shine of her eyes and the hint of awe in her voice. He expects reciprocation.

Instead, she says, "But…Blair."

Nate lies on the spot: "We broke up." There's a need inside of him that he can't quell, a desperate ache and a desire to fix this now, right now, as soon as possible.

Serena's voice falls open. "Because of me?" she asks in a tight whisper.

"Because of _me_," Nate corrects her. "Because of how I feel about you."

When, on impulse, he leans in to kiss her, she doesn't resist it. Her fists fall against his chest, clutching at the fabric of his shirt, and when he slides his tongue over the seam of her lips she opens her mouth against his, allowing the kiss to deepen. He explores her mouth with his tongue unhurriedly and it makes him long for her, for the girl he's always loved, for the woman he married.

He tucks her hair out of her face when the kiss breaks, fingers tender across her cheeks. She's crying and it shocks him a little to see the tears that streaked down her cheeks without his noticing.

"Did you come back for me?" he whispers. She looks ready to reply so he skims his thumb over her lips – he knows the answer now, years later, but he wants her to take a moment to think about it. "Even just a little bit?"

She crushes her mouth against his again instead of responding and he slips his arms around her, hands splayed over the small of her back. Her lips taste like strawberries and salt.

* * *

Blair has just glanced up from the barrage of texts Nate has sent her in the last half hour, all of which say _we need to talk asap_ in some variation, when she sees Serena approaching her determinedly.

It is obvious that her best friend has been crying – so obvious, in fact, that Blair panics for a full thirty seconds, remembering the last time she saw Serena cry, before it occurs to her that they're in the past, that they're still kids, that their lives are barely messy yet.

"S," she says quietly, standing up from the bench she's sitting on. "What's wrong?"

Serena's fingers close around her wrist and she tugs Blair back down on the bench to sit.

"Nate told me," Serena breathes.

Blair blinks and arches her eyes. She doesn't understand. And then she remembers all those texts from Nate and sighs, closing her eyes for a moment.

"B – "

"What did Nate tell you?" she asks calmly, slowly.

Serena fidgets. "That you two broke up."

"Oh." Blair pays great attention to the task of smoothing out her skirt in order to give herself time to think. "Well, yes. We did."

"He told me why," Serena continues edgily.

"And why would that be?"

Serena looks confused by her own words when she says, "He told me…he loved me." She's not looking at Blair anymore; her gaze is turned fully inward. More quietly, she says, "_Loves_ me."

Blair clucks her tongue impatiently. "Because he does."

And Serena stares at her as though she's speaking Japanese.

For a split second and only a split second, Blair allows herself to think of a time when Nate and Blair ended not because of Serena but because of Chuck. But the second passes and she says, "Listen, S, I'm sure you could be happy with Brooklyn. Actually, I _know_ you could be happy with Brooklyn. You could fall in love with him. But it's going to be hard and it's going to hurt. It'll be the kind of love that demands you do things you should never have to do, especially not for someone who's supposed to love you." Blair swallows and tells herself not to think of the things she was willing to do, of _the darkest thought you've ever had._ She forces herself to smile. "And look at Nate. He told you the truth, he loves you. He loves you even when you're fighting tooth and nail not to love him back."

Serena gapes at her, looking a little stunned – Blair knows this isn't the reaction she was expecting but she's not in the mood to trigger a useless fight between them. "I'm sorry, B," she whispers. "About what happened with Nate before I left. You know how sorry I am. And I'm trying…to be different."

"_Why_?" Blair demands. "Why would you do that when there's someone who wants you as you are?"

The blonde keeps staring at her. "You're not…mad."

Blair shrugs and stands up, slipping her hands into her lightweight gloves. "I have to go, S. You have my blessing, if that's what you need."

She walks about a block before her footsteps slow and she holds up an arm to hail a cab. "Twenty-twenty hindsight," she whispers with a slight smirk, letting the soft autumn wind carry her words away. How different their lives could have been.

* * *

Serena is sitting on the edge of his bed when he gets home, wrapped up in one of his monogrammed blue towels, her hair wet and loose and dripping onto her shoulders. Her face is scrubbed, her cheeks pink, and her lips curl into a half-smile when she sees him.

Nate feels his body react to the sight of her like a sixteen year old boy's.

"Hi," she says faintly.

He drops his schoolbag and toes off his shoes and loosens the knot in his tie so that he can yank it over his head. "Hey," he replies.

"I used your shower," she explains needlessly. "I was waiting for you and I got restless so I showered. And then I realize that I didn't have clothes to change into."

"I can give you something to wear," he offers, but makes no move to do so. "You were…waiting for me?" he wonders.

"Yeah." She bows her head. "You said all that stuff today."

He almost smiles, moving closer to her. "I remember."

She tilts her chin up to look at him. "You love me," she says carefully.

He keeps their eyes locked, knowing that she'll be able to see that it's true if she looks at him for long enough.

Moments pass and then she exhales sharply and licks her lips. "Kiss me," she whispers.

Nate doesn't need to be told twice. He braces his hands on either side of her and leans over her, presses his mouth to hers.

She falls back onto the bed and he follows her, moving his lips down the line of her throat. One of her feet, still damp, runs up his calf. Her hands are tugging at him and he doesn't resist, just settles his body over hers.

It's easy, really. After all these years he knows her body so well, and to her sixteen-year-old self, it's been over a years since they've done this. He kneads one of her breasts through his towel and covers her mouth with his, kisses her hot and deep and that's all it takes to have her back arching up off his mattress and her head falling back. "Nate, please," she gasps.

He chuckles softly. "Don't need to ask, S…"

She looks at him with hazy blue eyes and he works slowly at un-knotting her towel where it's secured just under one of her arms.

"Fuck," he whispers, kissing right beneath her ear. "I missed you."

Serena shivers a little underneath him and he buries his face against her neck.

* * *

He wakes at around two in the morning. His sheets are cold.

All traces of her are gone.

* * *

**tbc.**


	4. three

**A/N:** Thank you so much for all of your feedback!

* * *

For a long time, he can't fall asleep. It's impossible to stop thinking and he gets caught up in his memories.

At first it's Serena from hours ago, fingers clenched around a fistful of his pillowcase and her hair strewn like a halo over his sheets, pleased little sounds at the back of her throat as he mapped out her skin with his mouth. Then abruptly it's another night, a few years further into Nate's memories, a single candle flickering as he pressed an open-mouthed kiss just above her bellybutton, her fingers threading through his hair – and her smile, soft and tender, when he'd lifted his head to look at her face.

Even more abruptly he's in a more recent memory, devoid of smiles. She's on her knees in front of him, very nearly doubled over, blonde hair starting to spell out of the messy knot she's thrown it up into. And he reaches for her, hands gentle against her shoulders and then she's lashing out at him, shoving at his chest as she scream something, the notes of her voice high-pitched and ugly.

_No_, Nate thinks. His heart pounds: _no no no no no_.

He needs to fix this, but deep down he knows there isn't a solution. He wants to understand but he'll never be able to accept it. Deep down, Nate is no longer sixteen years old but twenty-seven, and his demons have grown up with him.

He waits until the sun comes up to make another attempt at sleep. Even then, whenever he closes his eyes he still sees too-white hallways.

It takes him a long, long time to drift off.

* * *

"You weren't in school today," Blair notes as she slips into the town car, setting her bag down on the seat between them.

"You noticed?" he teases her.

She frowns at the cheeky grin he's giving her. "You look _exhausted_, Nate."

Wordlessly, he hands her a box, the kind that bracelets come in.

She touches the edge of it softly; it's Tiffany blue. "Nate…should you be doing things like this? Considering what's been happening with your dad…?"

He shrugs. "We're not staying here. I've already dealt with his shit. I can buy whatever I want." He smiles genuinely at her as he nods to the box. "Sorry I broke up with you without telling you first."

Blair smiles wryly as she cracks the box open, revealing a pretty tennis bracelet. "Thank you for the gift I can't keep." She lifts an eyebrow. "Since we're not staying here."

He smiles sheepishly. She removes the bracelet from the box and loops it around her wrist, holding her arm out so that he can fasten it for her.

"You haven't been sleeping." It's not a question.

He bristles a little. "That's not important right now."

Blair sighs. "How are things with S?"

"She came over last night…"

She grimaces. "Spare me the sex, please."

"Then I have nothing to tell you." Nate rubs at the back of his neck. "We barely talked and she ran off after."

"Well, _she_ was in school today," Blair offers. "So at least we know that she's still in the city."

Nate doesn't acknowledge her attempt at levity, he's too busy scrutinizing her face. "What aren't you telling me?"

"She's still…with Dan."

His heart thumps. "What does that mean?"

"I saw them kissing," Blair admits, and then balks at the expression on his face. "What are you _smiling _about?"

"Your sour face." He pokes at the corner of her mouth, which is turned down in a frown. "Are you _jealous_?" he teases knowingly.

"No," Blair scoffs. "You're the one who should be jealous."

He pouts at her and proposes: "We could be jealous together?"

She rolls her eyes. "Just do what you need to do without causing unnecessary conflict, alright? And if you happen to be seized with the desire to buy me more temporary jewelry, that would be fine."

Nate grins. "Noted."

They're both quiet for a moment and then Blair says gently, "You look like you're in desperate need of a nap." She's pushing her luck with this subject and she knows it, but that doesn't deter her.

He frowns and exhales slowly. It's a difficult confession when he says, "I just…I can't stop thinking about her."

Blair reaches over and squeezes his hand.

* * *

Her jaw clenches when someone brushes by her, rudely hitting her shoulder with their own. Blair has been a lot of things since she was sixteen years old, but she remains the kind of girl that _nobody_ does that to.

She turns around slowly, her gaze smouldering. "_Excuse_ me?"

Dan Humphrey whirls on her. "Explain something to me," he blurts out.

"I don't owe you anything after _that_." She makes a show of rubbing at her shoulder.

He rolls his eyes, and it's such a conditioned response that her heart melts for a moment. _Dan_, she wants to say. _Look at you._ He's sixteen and experiencing his first heartbreak at the hands of Serena van der Woodsen, learning that from now on his life isn't going to be full of family game nights and words scribbled into moleskins as if that could make them come true. There is a world harder than that: the game is faster and the players change too quickly and it's inevitable, getting hurt – but higher stakes mean better rewards and you need to be prepared to risk it. She sighs softly. _Look at you._

Out loud, she says, "So Serena broke your heart into a million pitiful pieces, Humphrey. Write a sad poem about it and move on."

He glares at her. "You don't know what happened."

She rolls her eyes. "It's written all over your face."

Dan blows out an exasperated breath. "I…I worked so hard to prove myself to her. I wanted this…"

"Badly. I know."

The glare is back. "You don't know everything."

_But I know you._ The words pop into her head, surprising her. "You thought it was meant to be. Once upon a time, I thought I was meant to be with Nate. What you think isn't always what's right."

He looks at her cautiously. "She was…crying. When she told me that we couldn't see each other anymore."

"She's going through something," Blair offers softly.

"Something with Nate." Dan's voice is flat.

"Forcing yourself not to love someone takes a lot of energy," she says lightly. _So does forcing yourself not to like someone._ "It's hard for her, to let that go."

"She never could have loved me."

He sounds bitter and she doesn't like it. "Of course she could have. She could have loved you for years. But you can't fight something forever, and Nate and Serena…" She shrugs. "They implode sometimes. It wouldn't have anything to do with you, nothing at all. But it would happen again eventually and you'd get caught in the fallout."

Dan stares at her. "I almost want to believe you."

"So believe me." She smiles at him. _Look at you._ "I do know everything, Humphrey. One day you'll learn that." She flicks her wrist dismissively. "Now go contemplate my wisdom in Brooklyn, where you belong."

He trudges off. She hides her smile.

* * *

Nate grins as he jogs up the Met steps. "Are you getting _high_?" he asks Serena.

It's been two days since that night in his bed and she's sitting there alone. She glances up at him and her lips curve upward a little. "Just a cigarette," she says, holding it up.

He takes a seat next to her and feigns disappointment. "It's not even _lit_."

"I've been thinking about it…"

When she shivers a little, Nate frowns. "How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. A couple hours, probably."

"Hours?" He nudges her. "You skipped class."

She nudges back. "Gonna tell on me?"

"No," he laughs, studying her face for a moment. He feels a little overwhelmed by her proximity, by the sight of her tentative smile. "I'm just observing you," he teases.

Her smile dims a little as her expression turns serious. "D'you do that a lot?"

Honesty is the best policy so Nate says, "Yeah."

She's quiet as she absorbs his words, her head tilted downward.

Nate shrugs off his blazer and wraps it around her shoulder. "You look cold."

She leans into him, tucking her head against his neck. Her breath is warm against his skin. "Nate," she says.

He slips an arm around her and runs his fingers gently up and down her upper arm, over the sleeve of his blazer. He waits for her.

"I broke it off with Dan," is what she finally tells him.

He breathes her in; her shampoo smells like coconuts. "Because of me?"

"No." She turns her face into his neck a little more so that he can feel the way she smiles. "Because of me."

Gently, he tucks her closer to him, moves his hand down her arm and settles it at the curve of her waist instead. There are so many things he could say to her, so many things he wants to say to her – _I've loved you forever but you've never stopped running away from it, from me_ – but she is truly sixteen and she won't understand the gravity of what he's saying.

"You know we'll be on Gossip Girl," she murmurs.

"I don't care." He pauses. "Do you?"

"No." She lifts her head.

And the minute she does, he can't help but lift his free hand to her cheek and kiss her. Her eyes fall closed and his follow suit as their tongues brush. She kisses him greedily, and he's sure she must be able to feel this, even at sixteen, the powerful way he loves her, like he's never known how to love anyone else.

Serena's shaking and he doesn't know if it's from the wind or something else. Even as she starts to pull away he keeps sipping at her lips, taking the kisses she gives him like treasures.

"I never…" she breathes, and he knows instinctively how that sentence ends, _thought we'd have a chance._

Nate kisses her, slow and building until he manages to tug a whimper from the back of her throat, and then he smiles against her mouth. "I always," he tells her.

* * *

Blair's phone beeps when she's stretched out in her living room, getting a pedicure. She reaches for it lazily and sighs when she sees that it's a Gossip Girl blast – one of the perks of adulthood is the absence of that bitch – but she looks at it anyway.

There's a clever octet but she skims over the words, most of her attention dedicated to the picture. It's Nate and Serena sitting on the Met steps. They're kissing: Nate has one hand against Serena's cheek and she's leaning into him. Nate's St. Jude's blazer is around Serena's shoulders and for some reason the picture makes Blair's eyes sting. It reminds her of their wedding pictures, Nate and Serena's, and it enforces the point that as much as this might feel like a beginning, they're all actually dealing with the end of something.

Magic has its boundaries. Blair knows that, she has since her father's mother invited Blair to spend the summer after her eleventh birthday at the family villa in a small town just outside of Paris. It had been the most surreal summer of Blair's life, and though she was sworn to secrecy by her grandmother, when she got back to Manhattan she told Serena all about it. Blair had always been good at finding loopholes, in magic or otherwise – she knows now that in the beginning she believed a little too much, that she thought it was a guarantee for happiness. Nonetheless, by her eleven-year-old logic, telling Serena in no way meant that she was breaking her covenant: everyone knew that if you swore not to tell a secret, that meant you'd keep it between yourself and your best friend.

Serena was the one who told Nate. Around Blair's twelfth birthday, she and Nate had become an official couple. The following year, a week before Halloween, the three of them were sitting in Blair's bedroom as she fretted over her costume – Nate was going to be a pirate and Serena had inexplicably decided to be a gypsy – and that was when Blair found out that Nate knew.

"Be a witch," he'd suggested. He was high and laughing, tickling Serena's feet to make her giggle, too. "You won't even have to dress up!"

"S!" Blair had cried, scandalized. They always kept each other's secrets.

"What?" Serena had blinked at her innocently. "He's _your_ boyfriend. I thought you would have told him."

And it had changed then. What was a secret between Serena and Blair became a secret between Serena and Nate, and it would never be a secret between Blair and her boyfriend.

Magic has its boundaries: a secret vowed is not always a secret kept. But if it didn't, if it were as flexible as Blair had once thought it was, then she would go back, she really would. She would go back to moments she would do them over again.

She wouldn't laugh when Serena said that she wanted to get married on a boat, in the middle of the ocean. She would go into the Archibald house and get rid of every single bottle of alcohol. She would tell Nate about her magic first, before Serena did. She would still save Chuck Bass whenever he would let her, but she wouldn't sacrifice herself for him. She would go back to that night and drink four dirty martinis instead of five, so that she still would have ended up in Dan Humphrey's dorm room but so that she would _not_ vomit all over his shoes and proceed to tell him that they were actually uglier _before_, sans puke.

She knows that Nate is looking for answers and she wants him to find that. But she feels like she's giving him very little to work with – she wishes it was simpler than this.

* * *

**tbc.**


End file.
